DPS Meter Megathread

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Aerlana to share the quoted post.

And this is kind of my point. If you require a tracker to figure out how to beat a boss - to me that's a badly designed boss. Why would I need a separate tool to figure out which % of damage I'm missing on top of all the other mechanics that I need to do?

And from what I understand, all boss designs usually come down to just dps gates. Yes, you can have countless cool mechanics, but there's always gonna be some form of dps gate, because that's where the difficulty comes from in the fight. If the boss is on an arbitrary timer (or especially a literal one) that counts down to its ultimate raid wipe ability - of course you'll have to squeeze out your raid group until the very last drop of dps comes out, because you gotta beat the timer.

No, this is just, unfortunately, again, your limited experiences.

Part of the reason this is a problem, is that there are some people who have more mental... 'slots', let's call them. They can calculate and simulate and track many more things that the average person.

For those people, everything is happening too much and too fast. The DPS meter is 'taking the place of those extra slots', for those people, so that they can attempt the content by spending time reviewing the outputs, instead of using 'mental slots' they may not have.

I'm not sure what is worse, personally, bosses that a certain subset of people can't beat because they literally don't have enough focus basically 'no matter what they do', or the frustration of people who don't want to be subjected to DPS meters, but there's another outcome, the one you were suggesting.

If Intrepid could somehow completely prevent DPS meters, either by design or by ... I dunno, magic... they could make bosses that only the people with enough 'focus slots' could beat. The problem would be that those people would find them easy, other people would find them hard, and there would be less ways to understand why in both cases.

Azherae wrote: »

If Intrepid could somehow completely prevent DPS meters, either by design or by ... I dunno, magic... they could make bosses that only the people with enough 'focus slots' could beat. The problem would be that those people would find them easy, other people would find them hard, and there would be less ways to understand why in both cases.

Yep, and this is why I think that it's gonna be just the regular vicious cycle. And if those people at the top say that the content is super easy and boring, it'll be just like Noaani said, everyone (or at least a lot of people) below will believe them and might not even attempt the content. Or even if they do attempt it - they won't be the ones with huge capacity, so they'll find it super hard or even impossible. At which point the top people are bored, the aspiring people can't beat the content and you have both sides of the spectrum either leaving your game or endlessly complaining about the content in question, which would only confuse Intrepid cause you obviously can't appeal to both groups at the same time.

The only real solution I could see to this is some form of a catalyst item that you use on bosses during the raid, which would change how the boss behaves. It could be awarded through quests of some particular actions.

For example, a catalyst that's tailored for the "meter people" would boost the boss' overall complexity (and randomization of mechanics) and bump up the chances of certain drops by some amount.

The "layman's" catalyst would make the boss more of a dmg sponge with fewer mechanics, so people can just concentrate on their own rotations rather than both the dance of mechanics and dps. And there'd be no boost to loot.

The casual one would decrease the stats of the boss and would decrease the mechanics variety. Obviously would have the lowest drop with maybe even some drops missing.

In order to fully activate any of those 3 versions of the boss, you'll need to use all 40 catalysts of the same type during the fight (that is if we only apply this to raid bosses). If the boss wasn't killed after the usage - the catalysts go back to their users. If the boss was stolen (killed by a non-og-raid people) - same shit.

This way you'd have open world tailored experiences that are also "equalized" in their complexity, while also accounting for the skill lvl of the players. The pvp for/around the boss still remains. The encounter itself can still be repeated, and maybe even in a different version if so desired. The top rarity drops are still mainly farmed by the people who can farm them (the <10%), while the boss itself can be content for more people if they manage to catch its spawn in time.

What's the glaring cons of this suggestion that I'm missing, cause I'm sure there's some.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

If Intrepid could somehow completely prevent DPS meters, either by design or by ... I dunno, magic... they could make bosses that only the people with enough 'focus slots' could beat. The problem would be that those people would find them easy, other people would find them hard, and there would be less ways to understand why in both cases.

Yep, and this is why I think that it's gonna be just the regular vicious cycle. And if those people at the top say that the content is super easy and boring, it'll be just like Noaani said, everyone (or at least a lot of people) below will believe them and might not even attempt the content. Or even if they do attempt it - they won't be the ones with huge capacity, so they'll find it super hard or even impossible. At which point the top people are bored, the aspiring people can't beat the content and you have both sides of the spectrum either leaving your game or endlessly complaining about the content in question, which would only confuse Intrepid cause you obviously can't appeal to both groups at the same time.

The only real solution I could see to this is some form of a catalyst item that you use on bosses during the raid, which would change how the boss behaves. It could be awarded through quests of some particular actions.

For example, a catalyst that's tailored for the "meter people" would boost the boss' overall complexity (and randomization of mechanics) and bump up the chances of certain drops by some amount.

The "layman's" catalyst would make the boss more of a dmg sponge with fewer mechanics, so people can just concentrate on their own rotations rather than both the dance of mechanics and dps. And there'd be no boost to loot.

The casual one would decrease the stats of the boss and would decrease the mechanics variety. Obviously would have the lowest drop with maybe even some drops missing.

In order to fully activate any of those 3 versions of the boss, you'll need to use all 40 catalysts of the same type during the fight (that is if we only apply this to raid bosses). If the boss wasn't killed after the usage - the catalysts go back to their users. If the boss was stolen (killed by a non-og-raid people) - same shit.

This way you'd have open world tailored experiences that are also "equalized" in their complexity, while also accounting for the skill lvl of the players. The pvp for/around the boss still remains. The encounter itself can still be repeated, and maybe even in a different version if so desired. The top rarity drops are still mainly farmed by the people who can farm them (the <10%), while the boss itself can be content for more people if they manage to catch its spawn in time.

What's the glaring cons of this suggestion that I'm missing, cause I'm sure there's some.

For me, in my experience, no glaring 'cons' exist. This is the only way I know that this is normally achieved. MMOs just have to jump through more hoops to do the same sort of thing that other games do by changing difficulty or encounter 'type'.

However, Ashes is Open World Contested bosses, so I guess we could count that as one.

Back to the DPS Meter issue though, the only problem I'd see with just making the bosses 'hard to beat due to overwhelming focus' is that the actual thing a DPS meter does (let's use the example of me 'having the Combat Log and then parsing it using literally Excel) is keep track of a flow for you.

If an aspiring group has to attempt the boss 60 times because they 'can't pass the focus check', they may still eventually get lucky. If the 'high focus' group can farm it after 6 attempts, they will move on. Not everyone is a 'winner' in Ashes, so it's unlikely to matter as much.

Steven's choosing between two forms of frustration, and slightly choosing between two 'target groups for that frustration'. It's probably fine either way.

Please let us never speak of Absolute Virtue or Pandemonium Warden...

We have not received permission from Aerlana to share the quoted post.

From what I know both WoW's and FF14's raids are scripted, is that right? And from what I remember, at least some of FF11's bosses were quite randomized.

Now the question I have, are the ff14/wow bosses interesting because they have a proper "culmination" to the battle (especially in ff14's case), with the intensity of the fight growing throughout the fight, or was it just the fact of overcoming the peak difficulty of the boss?

What I'm trying to get at is this: would those bosses still be interesting if their skillset was completely randomized right from the first second of the fight? Or am I wrong and they were already randomized?

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Aerlana to share the quoted post.

From what I know both WoW's and FF14's raids are scripted, is that right? And from what I remember, at least some of FF11's bosses were quite randomized.

Now the question I have, are the ff14/wow bosses interesting because they have a proper "culmination" to the battle (especially in ff14's case), with the intensity of the fight growing throughout the fight, or was it just the fact of overcoming the peak difficulty of the boss?

What I'm trying to get at is this: would those bosses still be interesting if their skillset was completely randomized right from the first second of the fight? Or am I wrong and they were already randomized?

WoW and FF14 bosses are not randomized generally. It's almost impossible to compare them, a boss of the non-random kind is designed (for me personally) more as a spectacle or a speedrun.

I don't find them interesting, so I don't play those games. I believe I can see why others find them interesting (you can see it in Monster Hunter, a sufficiently 'overgeared' player can defeat certain higher level Monsters just by 'playing perfectly' but if you're not overgeared ENOUGH you still have to deal with its 'Rage' and 'Desperation' mechanics, even more perfectly... or you could play with much less stats and have to use tools, terrain, and sometimes teamwork)

I want to play Ashes because I saw (and experienced) the FF11 type bosses within Ashes, and hope for more of those.

To each their own, really?

We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.

Ahh, this is exactly why I said "separate" and not "3d party" or "outside" And while you're here, I forget, were EQ2's bosses randomized or scripted? Or was the randomization tied to boss stage, so it always became harder throughout the fight.

I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to have a fun boss fight w/o the timer of dps (the rising difficulty is that timer). Or would the hardcore pvers see such a fight cheap and boring (the fight being completely randomized and at peak difficulty right from the start)?

Azherae wrote: »

To each their own, really?

Yes, that is always true. I'm just trying to find the single middle ground, if there even is one Most likely this is a pointless endeavor, but that is why I usually mostly ignore this thread until I find a new way to try and suggest a middle ground for participants of this discussion

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.

Ahh, this is exactly why I said "separate" and not "3d party" or "outside" And while you're here, I forget, were EQ2's bosses randomized or scripted? Or was the randomization tied to boss stage, so it always became harder throughout the fight.

I'm just trying to figure out if it's possible to have a fun boss fight w/o the timer of dps (the rising difficulty is that timer). Or would the hardcore pvers see such a fight cheap and boring (the fight being completely randomized and at peak difficulty right from the start)?

I consider myself hardcore ENOUGH at PvE to be an answer-er here.

I don't need rage mechanics, other people need rage mechanics. Lemme explain.

If the boss does not rage, it's just '100% from moment one', then I have to be 100% from moment One. I have to learn and adapt in timeframes on the order of seconds, and react to things and UNDERSTAND what happened because of my reaction in fractions of seconds, right down to 'individual frames'.

Bring it on.

It's other people who don't enjoy this, it certainly ain't me.

If anything, it's the opposite, because I don't want to have to go through the entire easy first part every time I want to practice the harder second part. It's not there for me. It's there for a different player type.

Azherae wrote: »

Bring it on.

So while we wait for Noaani to answer with his pov, here's a question for you. Would you need a dps meter for such a fight, considering that there's no "timer" for the fight? The enrage isn't coming so it's not necessary for you to have the most perfect build that puts out the most perfect dps.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Bring it on.

So while we wait for Noaani to answer with his pov, here's a question for you. Would you need a dps meter for such a fight, considering that there's no "timer" for the fight? The enrage isn't coming so it's not necessary for you to have the most perfect build that puts out the most perfect dps.

It's not a DPS meter, it's a Combat Tracker.

A Combat Tracker is a way to 'watch the replay' of a battle, skipping unnecessary parts, and sometimes with more info than a player might have had from their perspective unless they read at significantly above average human speed (Combat Log).

The DPS part of this is often more relevant to me to find out (in FFXI for example) when someone did TOO MUCH DAMAGE, not when they didn't do enough.

Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.

Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.

Azherae wrote: »

Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.

Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.

Ok, this would probably go a bit too deep into the "middle ground searching" territory, but at this point I'm just curious about a pov other than my own on this topic.

If I understand correctly, you needed to see that course of events in the fight in the tracker in order to understand boss logic at that moment, right? What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?

I realize I didn't answer your question at all @NiKr .

Subconscious avoidance of a specific interaction.

I don't need the meter, my teammates do. For them, I AM the meter. Hopefully you know what I mean enough that I don't really need to say it and provoke the potential ire of a certain type of person.

I don't use combat trackers, I just need a combat log that I can access after the fact, because people can't pull references directly out of my brain.

Right, so then just this question remains then and I'll address this to both of you (Azherae and Noaani) and go to sleep so I'll read the answer later. Gotta have at least a bit of sleep before the super hype Sumeru reveal stream in Genshin whatever your answers are, this has been a good discussion for me, thx for sharing your povs.

NiKr wrote: »

What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Why did my Black Mage die? Their big spell hit at the end of an accidental Magic Burst and the boss now decided they looked tasty. Now we have no Stunner and everything's gone to hell. Oh well, ok, let's change the Weaponskill the Ranger uses so that this won't happen.

Parsing for damage is easy, you can just use a dummy or similar at-level mob for that. 'Watching a Replay in full' is harder.

Ok, this would probably go a bit too deep into the "middle ground searching" territory, but at this point I'm just curious about a pov other than my own on this topic.

If I understand correctly, you needed to see that course of events in the fight in the tracker in order to understand boss logic at that moment, right? What if there was no logic? What if the boss wouldn't have any particular triggers and would just use random shit from his skillset and switch his targets randomly - would that still be interesting for you?

Completely randomly?

Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.

On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.

Other than that, if you kept at least 'chances for Enmity to influence the attack's main target' but otherwise completely random, then yes, you just have 'most of FFXI' at that point, bearing in mind that the boss is limited by TP and cannot 'just spam powerful abilities if no one is attacking it' (given how TP gain works it CAN spam those abilities as soon as about 10 people are attacking it).

Azherae wrote: »

Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.

On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.

We could maybe finally move on from boring "agro the mob and stand in this place" gameplay to fun and engaging "track the mob's agro and defend the person who he agroes on next". I, as a tank, would love that shift personally.

We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.

But what if that same combination of boss attacks never repeats again? Wouldn't that have been wasted time spent going over smth that might never return?

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

I think Azherae meant it as "tank is no longer tanking, because the boss is never tied to the tank and instead just runs around". Some other roles might get diminished too, if the boss' and class design doesn't account for the randomness of the fight. Maybe healer is never needed because the boss does some weak random shit. Maybe archer is useless because he's constantly getting attacked and get utilize his range dps (though it could be argued that archer's kiting role is played at that moment). I'm sure there's a few other possible hole in the trinity system and roleplaying aspect of it that appear once the boss is no longer controllable by the players in any way. The tank is just the most glaring one.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

Sure, I'm fine with that too, but that defeats the Trinity System of MMOs and lessens the 'Role Playing' aspect.

On the other hand, you just described one of my favorite FFXI bosses, so there's that. It's still true to say that the 'Tanks' don't get to do their 'usual job' when going into that fight, though.

We could maybe finally move on from boring "agro the mob and stand in this place" gameplay to fun and engaging "track the mob's agro and defend the person who he agroes on next". I, as a tank, would love that shift personally.

You would. You are in the 'bring it on' category of player. I'll leave it to your personal experience to inform your perspective as to how many others like you there are.

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Noaani to share the quoted post.

But what if that same combination of boss attacks never repeats again? Wouldn't that have been wasted time spent going over smth that might never return?

That's usually easy to tell, but the entire reason you do that is so that you know that the issue was random and not with your plan, or you 'realize that you may also need to prepare people for that scenario' because the path through the fight might be so different. We're back to 'Jormungand' again (and I'd just go back to that topic). A 20-30 minute fight where multiple people are properly engaged, as we discussed there, means someone eventually misses something, possibly quite early in. (Even considering what this topic is, I prefer not to derail it, because despite what might currently be under discussion, I truly do 'see the purpose of this thread as giving Noaani a space to discuss with people and advocate for the suggestion given on behalf of me and others', glad to poke at boss design there though).

NiKr wrote: »

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

I think Azherae meant it as "tank is no longer tanking, because the boss is never tied to the tank and instead just runs around". Some other roles might get diminished too, if the boss' and class design doesn't account for the randomness of the fight. Maybe healer is never needed because the boss does some weak random shit. Maybe archer is useless because he's constantly getting attacked and get utilize his range dps (though it could be argued that archer's kiting role is played at that moment). I'm sure there's a few other possible hole in the trinity system and roleplaying aspect of it that appear once the boss is no longer controllable by the players in any way. The tank is just the most glaring one.

This is another whole separate topic and I'm sure we could find some post to piggyback that discussion off of that 'no one is using'.

Anyways I have no answer for you, Dygz, that you are likely to 'understand'. Your definitions are not similar to mine. NiKr, I don't personally care about the Trinity system, 'hard tanking', or that type of combat role. TL is purported to be Weapon based, as is Onigiri, as is Elite Dangerous.

I'm not going into a discussion about 'player synergy vs player twitch skills vs player role' again, as it leads to things that my mind labels as contradictions even when I try to understand a certain point of view. I will gladly throw a bunch of data and answers at NiKr if you two want to hash that out, my personal request is that you make a new thread for it or use the 'Character Balance' one on the front page somewhere.

I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.

Azherae wrote: »

I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.

Nah, it's fine. I think I'm kinda done with this thread. At least for now. I understand that it's not the game that requires the combat trackers, but the people themselves. And changing people is wayyy harder than changing a game's design.

NiKr wrote: »

Azherae wrote: »

I'll definitely segue that one into this if you want.

Nah, it's fine. I think I'm kinda done with this thread. At least for now. I understand that it's not the game that requires the combat trackers, but the people themselves. And changing people is wayyy harder than changing a game's design.

This is also my conclusion.

The top 10% of players are often led by the top less-than-1% of players, the 'shot-callers' in Raids, the 'Moguls' in Econ, etc. There's whole videos for just WoW about World First raid groups where the shot-caller explicitly doesn't even play in the raid because the amount of things you need to do and track is so 'much' that they are better off not.

From that (and massive discussion on the matter from that scene) we have the implication that content 'at limit' had a situation where the pioneers of it 1) had 30+ people, 2) (presumably) chose the one most observationally-endowed and possibly tactically skilled from their ranks to be in that role, in a game where WeakAuras and similar add-ons are a thing, and then 3) still concluded that it would be better if that person was only watching and commanding.

Because that's what the content required.

Go down one tier. Or two. There is a level at which that person 'can do it while playing', or at which 'they can do it in real time no WeakAuras no Combat Tracker'. If Steven's goal is 'I would like to cap everyone at this point, and make it so that the content is limited to groups with the sort of person who can do this with no external assistance' (let's go so far as to assume that me writing a Combat Log parser was off limits)...

Then he's just chosen his 'single digit percentage' by a different skillset than a game that allows Trackers. And this could easily be a functional goal. It 'creates a winner' by a factor that is a population selection based on something that could probably be outright genetic. But some would say skills are a gene lottery, so that's fine.

If anything, the thing I don't like about it, is that Trackers, particularly in games where there is true challenge, are a good way to spread out those 'skilled players', to allow them to form groups with less tactically skilled players rather than 'causing the friction and toxicity that comes with having no objective data'. I believe the latter can ultimately lead to a situation where all the 'skilled players' congregate together for success over time rather than leading and improving their less-skilled friends and counterparts.

I object to this game design style, despite 'being one of those players' with a group that has literally pushed through all that already, It's the sort of thing a more elitist/toxic version of me would design, which is why I usually doubt that Steven's stance is exactly what is presented as a whole. But either outcome is an accusation, either I'm saying 'this is performative (like YoshiP's stance)' where the 'you can't use Meters' is just a way to appease all the people who think they are bad while doing nothing about it...

Or I'm saying 'Steven is a toxic elitist who, as a leader, prefers a scenario where leaders have additional power and control because others don't have access to tools that can rival their abilities'.

But one can take the third option and take it in good faith, in which case, the response (from me at least) is 'see if someone can convince Steven that this will lead to one of the above and he should change stance'.

And that, I leave to Noaani and any staff Intrepid has who hold similar views, one step at a time.

We have not received permission from Dygz to share the quoted post.

Well, I doubt you will see the same three options I do, but just in case you agreed with anything ELSE I said, which is it for you? Doesn't have to be so discrete.

1) Performative, it's impossible to stop trackers, meaning that the winners will be cheaters OR that they will be constantly having to prove they don't cheat (because there's no way to detect it, and the definition of Combat Tracker is confusing in the case of someone like me who can program parsers)
2) Elitism, where the ideal is that people like me form exclusive groups with others like me when it comes to top end encounter content (this applies regardless of the content type, most analysts of the type I mentioned function across disciplines because again... genetic)
3) You hope that Steven has a more permissive stance on the type of tracker that I can write, or perceive that if I write it myself and don't just download it, I'm still being rewarded for my personal skill and should be allowed to do so as long as I don't distribute it (in which case those punished would be those who don't write them).
4) Insert own.

I can see an interesting world in case #3 where my team could 'register their proprietary tracker with Intrepid so that they know how it works and can just ban OTHER people doing it the same way'.

Victory by Verran Patent Law.